We are the student and youth wing of DSA in NYC. Our primary focus is organizing working-class students throughout the city to fight for and build power around issues that directly affect us. In the past, our chapters have campaigned around College for All, Medicare for All, and Universal Rent Control.

All NYC full- or part-time students under the age of 31 are welcome to join YDSA. As of January 2019, we have chapters at CUNY City College, CUNY Hunter College and New York University.

For more info (or if you are interested in starting a YDSA chapter at your campus), please email us at ydsa@socialists.nyc and check out ourFacebook page.

City College

The City College of New York (CCNY) YDSA was founded in the fall semester of 2017 and has grown into a real voice for students, centered around a campus heavily indebted to Wall Street and the State of New York. The single largest priority for CCNY YDSA is our Free CUNY campaign which builds on YDSA’s national campaign around College for All. Despite major setbacks in the quality of our college infrastructure (particularly in our diverse studies programs and the retention of our adjunct professors), we know these challenges are a result of extreme state disinvestment from CUNY and other public institutions for the sake of huge giveaways to major corporations like Amazon. Given our continued growth and the resonance of our mission, CCNY YDSA feels energized and confident enough to push through the real, material barriers to organizing that touch much of our membership in order to build student and worker on campus and beyond.

CCNY YDSA has set our priorities for the upcoming semester, which all connect to our ongoing “Free CUNY” campaign. These priorities include, first and foremost, assuring that our undocumented and muslim sisters, brothers, and comrades can take refuge in our place of learning, given the attacks on our communities by our federal government. We will also be running candidates for CCNY student government on a ticket in coalition with our sister organization on campus, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Lastly, we are committed to electing Bernie Sanders as President of the United States of America and will be working in tandem with NYC YDSA and NYC DSA to build our own power on campus and throughout the city during the national campaign.

The Hunter College chapter of YDSA is still in its early stages of development. Next semester, we will likely focus on organizing around College for All. Currently, we are working on student outreach and recruitment.

If you are a Hunter College student or live in the area, check us out on Facebook and come join a meeting!

NYU

2018 was an exciting year for the NYU chapter of YDSA. Over the course of two short semesters, we’ve found ourselves canvassing, tabling, and engaging in political education around the pressing demands of working-class New Yorkers. Last spring, we took on Medicare for All as our chapter’s main campaign and this past fall we joined DSA’s statewide fight for Universal Rent Control.

Those of our members who stuck around last summer kicked off June with NYU YDSA’s weekly reading group, where we managed to read and discuss the entirety of Marx’s Capital Volume 1 by summer’s end! Bringing this theory into practice, our chapter also canvassed regularly for Julia Salazar beginning in July and helped elect the first socialist to NY State Senate in decades. That same August, we fundraised and sent a five-person delegation to the YDSA 2018 Summer Convention in Minneapolis.

We wrapped up 2018 with an incredible student town hall with Julia Salazar where we talked about her historic win, what it means to have a socialist state senator, and how students can advance the fight for socialism. We’re excited to continue our housing work in 2019 as the rent stabilization laws inch toward expiration, and we’re also gearing up to mobilize students across New York City for Bernie 2020.